Still Lives(68)

“They’re so dim you start shivering the moment you enter them—you know those places?”

He doesn’t answer, but he isn’t hanging up either.

“Whoever killed her reminds me—I have reason to believe—” I swallow, trying to summon my inner Cherie, calm and lawyerly. “I have reason to believe there was an intruder in my apartment last night.” Without waiting for Hendricks’s response, I tell him about receiving the handwritten note to Greg, then coming home last night, hearing the footsteps, and exiting swiftly. I tell him about my missing phone. I use clinical, distant words: enter, object, situation, egress.

Hendricks is quiet on the other end. I wait for him to dismiss the whole thing, tell me I am crazy, I am raving about mountain canyons. I can almost picture him, sleepy-eyed, watching my unraveling.

“Linville Gorge,” he says. “I found a patch of snow there once in mid-July.” Then he clears his throat. “You should have told me about the note.”

I don’t answer.

“Did someone follow you? Where did you go? Where are you now?” And then he’s hammering question after question at me before I have a chance to answer.

I tell him I slept in my car and I’m safe in my office with the door locked.

“Steve Goetz called me right after you and I met yesterday,” says Hendricks. “He wanted to inform me about a young blond woman who came to his gallery under false pretenses.”

“Strange,” I say. “I wonder who that was.”

I hear a skeptical silence. “Is there anything else I should know?” Hendricks says.

I tell him about the flash drive Greg gave me. I explain that the photos are all studies for Still Lives and, as such, they are also artistic property. “The artist wanted them destroyed.”

“They should be examined first. I’ll get them to the right person on the squad,” he says, sounding more relieved than anything. “They’ve got a big team on this now.” He pauses. “And that’s it? No more hidden evidence?”

I say no. “Did they find out anything else? About how she died?”

“There were other complications.” There’s a noise like a car door slamming. “And I have no clue what they are yet, so don’t ask.” An engine rumbles to life.

He asks me if there’s a spare key to my apartment, and I explain about the one under the flowerpot. “If you find anything there, I mean, something that connects to Kim’s death—you have to believe it’s not mine.”

“Who else knew about your spare key?” he says.

I tell him Greg did. “But I think the intruder went through the bathroom window. It was open.”

Hendricks asks if this is the best number to reach me.

I realize it’s the only number I have. “For now,” I say, embarrassed.

I should tell him I’m planning to escape L.A. after rush hour. I have an old college friend in Tucson. I could drive there today, just as soon as I see Yegina first.

“Be good and careful,” I say instead, and immediately feel silly. “That’s what my grandmother always said when we went out the door.”

Hendricks hesitates for a moment and hangs up.

I’m about to call Yegina when I spot Juanita mounting the stairs, slowly, her hand on the railing as if she’s afraid to lose her balance. Already? It’s not even eight o’clock. I shove my chair back and sink beneath my desk. It has a front panel that I can hide behind, with a cube of space big enough for me if I sit with my knees curled into my chest. I climb in.

Please, be patient with me, I tell Yegina in my mind. I love you and I’m sorry. My heart hurts for Don, for the whole family. My body is tired.

I must drift off because when my phone rings, my heart pounds so hard I feel my pulse in my ears. I wait for a second, then dart up and grab the receiver, pulling it by the cord down into my hiding place. “That was fast.”

“You’re there.” Greg’s words are raspy, as if he hasn’t spoken aloud in a long time. He also sounds congested, like he’s holding the phone very close. But more than anything he sounds painfully glad to hear my voice.

For a moment, I see Greg years ago, shooting up both hands to wave at me, a victory salute, as my bus glided into the station of his small Thai city.

“Are you home?” I say, rubbing my sleep-glued eyes.

“I’m at the house. I mean, your house. I was freaking out. I rang the bell a hundred times. Why are you at work so early?”

“Long story.” I sit up and bump my head.

Greg has started talking again, his voice like a faucet that won’t stop running. He says he doesn’t know what to do and he can’t sleep and he can’t eat and the press is following him everywhere and he can’t go back to his gallery because they’ll be lurking, so Cherie let him come to her apartment and take a shower but then she kept fussing over him, and all he wanted to do was see me, so he slipped out when she went to get breakfast and took a taxi to Hollywood but I wasn’t there. “When I couldn’t reach you, I really freaked out, Maggie.”

I don’t even know where to begin, what to ask, what to answer. How to tell Greg how sorry I am and how over him I am at the same time. How exhausted and filthy I feel, and how the word shower fills me with longing. A hot soapy shower, with steam so thick it’s hard to breathe.